Christie vetoes bill limiting capacity of gun magazines

Governor Christie responded to a gun-control bill born in the national debate that followed a deadly school shooting by rejecting it Wednesday and turning it instead into a proposal to change the state’s mental health laws.

In a broadly written 30-page veto message that accused Demo­crats of stalling his own proposals, Christie dismissed a 10-round limit on the capacity of gun magazines, saying it “defies common sense” to think that limiting the number of bullets in a weapon would reduce violence.

Christie used his conditional veto authority to send the measure back to lawmakers, inserting recommendations he first made in April 2013 that would make it easier to involuntarily commit people with violent tendencies and make it more difficult for those who have been committed to mental health treatment to obtain a firearms permit.

His announcement came just after the parents of Sandy Hook school shooting victims and gun-control advocates delivered an online petition to Christie’s office with 55,000 signatures urging him to sign the bill.

It was that shooting in Newtown, Conn., in late 2012 that led Christie to form a task force to look at the state’s gun control laws and other issues related to violent crimes. The task force issued a report last April making nearly 50 recommendations, among them a ban on the sale of .50-caliber assault weapons, a measure Christie initially backed but then vetoed along with two other gun-control measures.

As a Republican leading a state that largely favors gun-control measures, Christie’s actions on the bills Democrats in the Legislature sent him have been viewed against the backdrop of partisan presidential politics. Christie has said he will make a decision after November about running for president in 2016, and if he does, his record on gun issues will be scrutinized by conservative primary voters.

Democrats on Wednesday continued to accuse the governor of pandering to a conservative national audience, but Christie said in his veto message that it is the Democrats who were playing politics by sending him the bill.

“We will not settle for grandstanding reform in name only,” Christie wrote in his veto message. “We can insist that elected officials pass laws that will bring about meaningful change. Mass violence will not end by changing the number of bullets loaded into a gun.”

He added, “It will end by taking seriously our duty to incarcerate violent criminals, not by criminalizing the conduct of law-abiding citizens to score political points.”

But the Democrats turned Christie’s own veto language on him.

“The governor’s action today can best be described with the words used in his own veto statement, ‘difficult choices are brushed aside … uncomfortable topics are left unexplored,’Ÿ” said Assemblyman Lou Greenwald, D-Camden, a primary sponsor of the bill. “I would imagine this is a very uncomfortable topic to have with conservative voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.”

Christie, who is traveling the country raising money as chairman of the Republican Governors Association this year, visited New Hampshire last month and heads to Iowa in two weeks.

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg, D-Teaneck, another primary sponsor of the bill, said while limiting the number of rounds may not have reduced violence, the Sandy Hook shooting showed it can save lives because children escaped when the gunman had to reload.

“Why does somebody need 15 rounds?” she said. “Who is giving up the ability to go hunting or protect their families with an assault weapon, or a 15-round weapon versus a 10-round weapon? It wasn’t like we exactly asked somebody to sacrifice.”

Senate President Stephen Sweeney, D-Gloucester, said if Christie were serious about mental health, the governor would have signed a bill the Legislature approved last year to implement instant background checks for firearms purchasers. Christie vetoed the bill Sweeney sponsored saying none of the technology necessary to implement it exists.

“If the governor is serious about dealing with who purchases guns and how they purchase them, we will gladly work with him. But his track record of vetoing nearly every gun violence prevention measure, including bills he himself has called for, leaves one to wonder if he is in fact serious,” Sweeney said referencing the .50-caliber weapon ban Christie also vetoed. “This veto sounds like it was geared more for a national audience, rather than crafted for the streets of New Jersey.”

Christie first proposed a series of “violence control” measures in April 2013 after the New Jersey Safe Taskforce issued its report. The governor called for stricter penalties for illegal gun possession charges and firearms-trafficking offenses as well as mental health reforms.

“Eliminating the obvious dangers posed by untreated mental illnesses should have been a priority for the Legislature,” Christie said in his veto statement Wednes­day. “But taking up the challenge of mental health would mean a controversial, challenging and often uncomfortable public dialogue. Not surprisingly, the majority supporting this bill took the easier path.”

With his veto Christie removed all of the language related to the ammunition limits and instead replaced it with five mental health proposals. Among his recommendations is requiring a person who has been involuntarily committed to mental health treatment to provide “adequate medical evidence” before being approved for a firearms purchaser identification card.

In addition to calling for a new standard to make it easier to involuntarily commit people with mental illness, Christie also recommended new standards for determining whether involuntary outpatient treatment is appropriate, which would factor in a patient’s failure to comply with treatment, as well as acts of violent behavior.

The governor also recommended streamlining the transfer of patients between inpatient and outpatient treatment programs as deemed appropriate by clinicians, and training for first responders when they encounter a person with mental illness in crisis.